Offensively & Defensively Speaking: Oregon State

It is abundantly clear that Oregon State came to play and was well prepared to attack our defense.

Their defense was just good enough. But make no mistake about it, USC’s defense got throttled…again. By the way, OSU’s 3-stars are way better and more coached up than our 3 and 4-stars. The education our defense is getting is humbling.

Our offense showed up and was “plucky” against a better team. Yup, Oregon State is a much better football team than we are right now. I’m not sure where Donte Williams wants to start the “we’ll get it fixed” campaign. But if it were me, we better start winning the Line of Scrimmage (LOS) battle on defense and start pressuring the quarterback. Some sacks would really help, but so would sound perimeter defense and pass coverage assignments.

Defensively Speaking

The defense gave up 535 yards, 31 first downs, 50% of third-down conversions (and more than half of those were by rushing), five straight touchdown drives and ultimately 45 points on their way to a 45–27 defeat.

While gaining two interceptions, we now have our third game this season without a sack or really pressuring the quarterback. If I see Drake Jackson drop into zone coverage one more time, I’m going to scream. He is our best pass rusher and having him out of the play makes no sense to me.

Korey Foreman is clearly learning and is not really a factor as he is routinely too far upfield and gets single blocked far too easily. But most notable is our inability to stop the run, whether it is Wildcat, sweeps out of T-formation or RPO. It just doesn’t matter. We get manhandled time and time again.

We generated little pressure on the quarterback and worse still, no TFLs on running plays. Not even one. That is pathetic and embarrassing.

Secondary coverage was exploited badly as Oregon’s quarterback (Chance Nolan) had all the time he needed. With our multiple blitzing scheme, if we don’t hurry or sack the quarterback there will be at least one receiver open and usually more than that. Oregon State’s coaching staff dialed into Todd Orlando’s defense differently than what Stanford did. What OSU did was less vertical than Stanford with more crossing and late throws, which were very effective.

What do you fix first?

We don’t have the luxury of picking. We better simplify the defensive pass coverage, focus on run stoppage and pressure with DLs, and some blitzing. The late linebacker blitzing is killing us. We don’t get even close to the QB and we leave the middle zone wide open. I don’t think improvement will be easy as our talent pool and tough football players are limited. We’ve got some really good teams left on our schedule and frankly, it scares me.

Offensively Speaking

I’d say that there was enough offense to win this game if the defense had stepped up.

We had 32 first downs (9 by penalty and we still lost badly). Frankly, if we can’t stop the run or effectively run the ball ourselves we’ll be lucky to be bowl eligible. Fortunately, Slovis survived this game with only two sacks and he is healthy.

As I watched the replay, I thought the offensive line was outplayed again, but gave a much better effort and second-level blocking than what they showed against Wazzu. Slovis’s fumble wasn’t really on him and only one of his picks was consequential to the game’s outcome in my view.

As for the run game, we need to put speed in the backfield (Vavae Malepeai is a step slow, but tough), show motion to confuse the defense and quit the predictable first down RPO by a QB that will never keep the ball on a run. It is a negative play waiting to happen. The offensive line got pushed hard by a tough group of 3-star recruits who were coached up. What are we waiting for with our 3-stars?? Coach ‘em up guys!

I’m skipping shout-outs this week because as you can probably tell, that list is pretty darn short (Drake London…period). Head Coach Donte Williams has his work cut out for him. This is all very new to him and it shows. He needs some help from this staff, but that is a big ask.

Try reducing the number of penalties down from 11 (btw, Oregon State had 14), make some personnel changes, simplify the defense and tell Graham Harrell we’re not throwing the ball 49 times again so figure out an effective run game.

I know, I’m dreaming but he needs to do something, and this week at that.